New Adult Threesome Contest Entry #17

Title: WEAKEST LYNX

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Word Count: 100K

QUERY:

What would you do if nowhere was safe, and the death threats kept coming?

In WEAKEST LYNX, twenty-year-old Lexi Sobado was “unschooled:” her parents focused on teaching her a variety of skills to tackle anything life presents. The main tools that she gained came from her mentor Spider McGraw, an Intelligence officer with Iniquus, a secretive government support group. By the time she turned eighteen, Lexi was in the field working for Spider, puzzling through crimes, and performing sleight-of-hand work that produced the data needed to put the bad guys away.

Now that her mentor has vanished on an assignment, Lexi decides her life needs a different direction. She settles down in a quiet neighborhood. Envelopes appear with demonic poems that portend a vicious attack. Lexi never dreamed that she’d need her toolbox of skills to solve a crime directed toward her. But no matter what she tries, she gets no closer to catching the stalker. Not even her psychic abilities help – in fact, they seem to make everything worse by giving her confusing clues.

The stalker attacks Lexi, who narrowly survives the assault. Lexi moves from the hospital into the care of Iniquus and the handsome Striker Rheas. Lexi must reveal her unusual training and Iniquus connections to help them track the stalker. But the killer is determined to have Lexi. She must use all her wit and skills to save her life and stop the lunatic from killing again.

As a member of Sisters in Crime, my short stories “Key to a Crime” and “Caged Bird” will appear in the anthology VIRGINIA IS FOR MURDERS (Koehler Books, Jan 2014). I have concluded a mentorship under former RITA judge Barbara Plum, and I receive ongoing fiction coaching with author/editor Lindsay Smith. In non-fiction, I am a contributor to two book projects concerning diabetic alert dogs, including the upcoming book, LIFESAVING LABRADORS, edited by Dr. Ben McClelland, University of Mississippi (Koehler Books, Jan 2014). My blog is ThrillWriting.blogspot.com, helping writers write it right. I have an M.S. in Counseling from the Medical College of Virginia and have worked as a court-mandated interventionist for homicidal/suicidal clients. And since I survived my own stalker, I bring personal experience to my writing.

FIRST 250

The black BMW was coming straight at me. Heart pounding, I stomped the brake pedal flush to the floorboard. My chest slammed into the seat belt. My head snapped forward. No time to blast the horn, but the scream from my tires was deafening. The BMW idiot threw me a nonchalant wave – his right hand off the wheel, with his left hand pressed to his ear still chatting on his cell phone. Diplomatic license plates. Figures.

Yeah, I didn’t really need an extra shot of adrenaline, like a caffeine I.V. running straight to an artery. I was already amped. My breath hissed between my teeth, relieving some of my tension as I sent a quick glance down to my purse. A corner of a cream-colored envelope jutted out.

Focus, Lexi. Follow the plan. Give the letter to Dave and leave. Let him work this out.

The near miss with the BMW guy probably wasn’t all his fault. I couldn’t remember the last ten minutes of drive time. Pressing down on the gas, I veered my Camry back into the noonday gridlock weaving past the graffiti-ed storefronts of D.C.

Inching through the bumper-to-bumper traffic, I focused on my review mirror as a bike messenger laced between the moving cars on his suicide mission to get the parcel in his bag to the right guy at the right time. Once he handed over his package, he’d be done. Lucky him. I knew that handing over my letter to Dave was going to be just the beginning.